The power of the Great Forest was always stronger on the solstices, when the rise and ebb of the sun’s light shifted. And this year’s summer solstice was only three weeks away.
The thought made Rachelle feel cold and hollow and free all at once. If the world was ending in three weeks, then she didn’t have to care about Erec or the King or the unrest in the city anymore. She just had to ready herself to face her forestborn.
Maybe she could make a final effort to find Joyeuse. She’d given up over a year ago, because she couldn’t see any hope, and the worry was driving her mad. But now . . . well, she could bear to go mad with searching for a few more weeks or months. She could bear it, and then she could die fighting, and she didn’t have to care about anything else.
In the distance, the palace bells started tolling. Rachelle counted the peals, the same way she did every morning.
Five . . . six . . . seven.
The bells stopped. And then she remembered the levée.
She didn’t have to care about anything, including the King’s orders, but if she wanted to make another attempt at finding Joyeuse—and she did want to, she had to—then it would be a good idea to avoid mortally offending him. Becoming a wanted fugitive could wait a week or two.
Rachelle sprang out of bed. The King’s levée started at eight, and he was famously intolerant of people who were late for any court ceremony. An hour was more than enough time to get to the royal apartments, but if she wanted breakfast before facing an hour or more of tedious ceremony, she’d have to get to the guard’s mess room, all the way on the opposite side of the palace.
Luckily, she was still in her uniform from the night before. She buckled on her belt, not even bothering to grab her sword, and ran out the door, rebraiding her hair as she clattered down the dark, predawn hallway. She started running down the stairs, then simply vaulted over the railing to the landing below. The impact sent a jolt up her bones, jarring her enough that she stumbled to the side—
Into the young man who had been running up the stairs.
In a heartbeat, she had him slammed against the wall with her dagger at his throat. Their faces were barely a hand’s span apart; she could feel his chest heaving for breath under her arm. Then her mind caught up with her body and she realized he was unarmed.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Well, I was running from assassins,” he said. “Now I’m being threatened with a knife.”
“What?” said Rachelle, and then she heard the men clattering up the stairs after him. She turned, and saw the glint of drawn blades.
There were three of them, all with rapiers, and she had only a dagger. It would have been a wretchedly uneven fight, if she were human.
It was still a wretchedly uneven fight; it was just uneven in her favor. Rachelle took down the first with a simple kick to the head, then whirled and caught the second’s blade in the hilt of her dagger. Twist, wrench, and the rapier flew out of his hand—she forgot how weak humans were, she thought as she slammed her dagger’s hilt into his forehead.
The third one came at her with a rapier and a dagger, and from the way he twirled them, she could tell he was really very good. His technique was probably better than hers. But now her heart was thundering with the joy of the fight, her blood was singing in her ears, and he seemed ridiculously slow, as if he were moving through honey. Stepping inside his guard, seizing his sword arm, and wrenching it out of the socket was almost too easy. A few good kicks, and he was down.
She looked back at the man they had been pursuing. Wiry, with a square, sharp face softened by a snub nose, and tousled, pale brown hair, he couldn’t be much older than her. There was nothing remarkable in his features—not like Erec’s sculpted beauty—yet they felt vaguely familiar. He had sat down on the stairs to watch her fight, elbows on his knees, gloved hands resting loose, and he was watching her with an intense, guarded calm.
“Shouldn’t you have kept running?” she asked.
“Were you planning to lose?” He sounded politely curious.
“No.” She stepped to the nearest would-be assassin, pulled his belt loose, and started tying him up. “Does anyone?”
“You’re bloodbound. They couldn’t hurt me unless you let them.” He shrugged. “And if you wanted to hurt me, I couldn’t hope to escape.”
Rachelle moved to tie up the second man. “You think I want to hurt you?”
“I don’t know. Do you?” His voice was light and soft, but she could see the tension in his jaw, in the lines of his arms. She could feel the swift beat of his pulse beneath his calm facade.
Rachelle knew she wasn’t being fair—anyone should be suspicious of her, after the things she’d done—but even so, for a moment she could hardly breathe through the helpless fury choking her.
She pulled out one of her knives and flung it to land quivering in the wall two finger widths from his head.
He barely twitched.
“Keep the knife,” she said. “Maybe it will make you feel safer.”
His eyes widened a little and his mouth started to open.
“Don’t thank me,” she added, finishing the knots on the third man. “Go find a guard to take care of the prisoners. I’m going to get breakfast.”
She whirled and left. She made it across the rest of the palace without incident, even managing to snag a few rolls from the guard’s mess room just before the clock tolled half-past. Plenty of time, she thought.
Then she got lost. She’d hardly ever been to the royal wing, and one huge room encrusted with gold-leaf tendrils and curlicues looked much like another. By the time she got to the anteroom of the royal bedchamber, it was well past eight and the sun had finally risen.
Rachelle could remember when summer had meant that the sun would be up by seven. People said that once upon a time, the summer sun would rise even earlier, but that was hard to imagine.
The anteroom, of course, was completely stuffed with people waiting to get in, a seething mass of brocade and lace, powdered wigs and the stench of pomade. Rachelle threaded through the crowd as fast as she could, trying not to think of how the King might punish her.
Then she saw the young man she’d rescued earlier, standing near the door with a guard on each side.
“Is he in trouble?” she asked one of the guards.
“No,” he said.
“Waiting to get in,” said the young man, with the same wry calm as earlier.
“You’re coming in now,” she said, seizing his shoulder. “With me.” He could at least serve as her excuse.